Prof Andreas Melzer, University of Dundee“Robotics for Image Guided Therapy and FUS”

Dr Francesco Setti, University of Verona“Embodied AI in robotic surgery: challenges and opportunities”

14.50 – 15.30 Round table

On the future of AI+Robotics (Hospital of the future) and on the health care topic group.Chairman: Prof Paolo Fiorini

European Robotics Forum 2020

The European Robotics Forum (ERF), the most influential meeting of the robotics community in Europe, will be held in Malaga, Spain, on 3-5 March 2020, at theTrade Fairs and Congress Center of Malaga (FYCMA). Over 1000 European robotics top experts are expected to attend the 11th edition of the conference.

ERF2020 will host a major exhibition where companies, universities and research institutes showcase the most advanced European prototypes, products, services and projects funded under EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme.

With over 50 workshops highlighting the newest robotics research, the event will offer a unique window to the latest developments on the European markets.

Legged robots are mainly designed to traverse unstructured environments where wheeled robots have limited mobility. Their applications range from nuclear decommissioning to mining, search and rescue, inspection and surveillance. In addition, they can be applied to flank human workers (or collaborate with them) in order to reduce labor accidents, as well as in elderly care. The next generation of legged robots are envisioned to operate either autonomously or semi-autonomously (through tele-operation) over uneven terrains. This requires the rejection and compensation of disturbances, the exploitation of visual feedback, and the ability to manipulate both fragile and heavy objects. The main ingredients for legged locomotion are planning, control, perception and state estimation. Numerical optimization is a promising tool for motion planning and control for legged robotic systems in complex geometry environments (e.g. multi-contact scenarios) because it enables to push the machine up to the performance limits.

Indeed, when the complexity of the terrain increases, or when the execution of the requested task involves highly dynamic motions, numerical optimization and machine learning strategies are needed to automatically find feasible trajectories and control actions that could not otherwise be determined. In this seminar I will mainly focus on the planning aspects and on different strategies to achieve effective locomotion across complex terrain.

BIO

Michele Focchi is currently a Researcher at the DLS team in IIT. He received both the Bsc. and the Msc. in Control System Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. After gaining some R&D experience in the industry, in 2009 he joined IIT where he developed a micro-turbine for which he obtained an international patent and a prize.In 2013, he got a PhD in robotics, getting involved in the Hydraulically Actuated Quadruped Robot (HyQ) project.He initially was developing torque controllers for locomotion purposes, subsequently he moved to higher level (whole-body) controllers and model identification. He was also investigating locomotion strategies that are robust to uncertainties and work reliably on the real platform. Currently his research interests are focused on pushing the performances of quadruped robots in traversing unstructured environments, by using optimization-based planning strategies to perform dynamic motion planning.

Our traditional Christmas Clip has just been released! We had so much fun in the making of. Enjoy and share it!

Trailer: It’s Christmas Eve and the Lab is almost empty Nobody is expecting a deadline. An email arrives…❓Will our hero decorate the Christmas tree by midnight?❓Will he receive his presents?❓Who is going to help him?🎬Watch the story!

Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year from the ALTAIR Lab Team.

For more information about the technology developed in the video visit this link

Ethical robots to help the elderly population.

Paolo Fiorini was one of the speakers of the Festival del futuro in the session “Living healthier and longer: challenges and promises for the next decade”, talking in particular about the development of robotics to support aging.

Complete speech [IT LANG]

Robotics, home automation and sensors for an aging society? In Verona we have an excellent center in this regard. The research deals with exploiting robotics to improve and monitor treatments but also mobility, we think of exoskeletons.

But also artificial intelligence can intervene in cognitive support, in this field there are many studies in particular in support of surgery or in the recognition of the onset of diseases. We must design solutions that are respectful of ethics and communication and new types of education and training must be developed to allow the conscious use of new technologies without being dominated by them.

Festival del Futuro

The first edition of the Festival del Futuro took place in Verona on 16 and 17 November 2019. A two-day journey and plenty of meetings with 38 future makers of our time: scientists, doctors, economists, entrepreneurs, environmental and geopolitics experts.

Connect

This site and any third-party tools used by this site use cookies that are necessary for its operation and that are useful for the purposes outlined in the cookie policy. By closing this banner, you consent to the use of cookies. To learn more or opt out of some or all cookies, please see the cookie policy.OkPrivacy policy